Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates to a method in materials testing to automatically locate the center of a feature on or in an object using the off-axis force feedback of a loadcell.
Description of the Prior Art
In materials testing, measuring the force and displacement characteristics of compliant features in or on an object can require precise placement of the probe tip of the displacement sensor. This can be due to the variability of the force/displacement with the position of the compliant feature of interest. Therefore, slight offsets from the intended location of measurement can result in widely varying force/displacement results.
In the prior art, a technique for aligning the center of the feature of interest under the center of the probe involves a human attempting to visually and manually align them. This is subjective and error-prone resulting in potentially high positional error in the alignment of the probe to the center of the feature, which can result in erroneous force/displacement results.
Additionally, touch probes or kinematic resistive probes have been developed by Renishaw and Marposs to determine the location of parts and features in a materials testing environment.